I appear to have written a small book about Warlocks in the past two months. It’s not quite NaNoWriMo volume, but there are graphs, and that evens things out, right?

Well, after some cursing at ebook format converters, I’m happy to announce that The Decline and Fall of Warlocks in Cataclysm is now available as a single electronic book for your reading convenience. Two files are available:

eReader Archive – a .zip file with HTML, EPUB, MOBI, and TXT versions of the series. Kindle users should try the MOBI, others the EPUB or HTML.

There’s some formatting challenges when moving from one medium to another – images go missing for no reason is my big problem. I’ve tried to smooth it out as best I could – the HTML file should be the best one to use.

It’s a remarkable piece of work, Cynwise, and I’m happy to have it to refer to these ways. Whatever changes come, it will remain valuable to know “this is how it looked at time T to a careful observer with good documentation”.

Your blog is one of my favorites to read. You not only have incredible knowledge of the game, but also infuse parts of yourself in each post that make them more enjoyable to read. Thanks for writing about the decline of warlocks. It is a great work, and one that Blizzard should study before making any changes to any class in the game.

I think Mages have been in really good shape in Cata, honestly. They’ve seem fun and engaging, offering a variety of utility and – most importantly – different levels of complexity for players. If I hope mages take anything away from the Warlock Cata Experience, it’s to be careful what you wish for – new stuff for the sake of new stuff doesn’t always work out for the best.

As a warlock, there have been several times where I’ve had that strong “grass is greener” feeling with other classes. When friends/guildies would ask why, I would point to some of the flaws and frustrations of the class but would be met with the sentiment that either I was simply “full of QQ and already overpowered” (usually by pointing at the top .001% of the warlock players arena rankings) or that “someone has to be on the bottom/you’re still #1 on the charts/not everyone can be #1.”

Data notwithstanding, I knew and have expressed the information, feelings, and challenges, you so eloquently described, to others in the past. While my attempts were much briefer and not nearly as complete, they were very much in line with your essay (this may or may not be an apt description, my apologies).

In any case, you hit every point of contention I think I’ve ever had in my warlock playing history (Sep ’09 to current) extremely well. It’s been very helpful in enlightening others with why the warlocks in my guilds have always complained about being warlocks. At least to those that took the time to read.

Thank you! I am cautiously optimistic that the design is going in the right direction, but the class’s recovery is by no means a sure thing. A lot of it will depend upon tuning – Affliction’s mana usage, for instance – and tuning is a difficult thing.

The disparity between the top warlocks and the majority of the class has been difficult to articulate. It’s probably been the single biggest division in the warlock community – in a way, it defines the community – and it will take some pretty radical changes to the class to mitigate or erase.

This is a great, well thought out, thought provoking piece. It’s highly academic in its scope, design and execution. Brilliantly researched and analyzed. If we got more things like this, the likelihood of video games being considered “art” would increase dramatically. One of the greatest essays(if not the best) I have ever seen about World of Warcraft. Bravo.

About CWM

Cynwise's Warcraft Manual is a weblog about many facets of the World of Warcraft: PvP battlegrounds, digital avatars, warlock theory, and having fun with alternate play styles are common topics.